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Possible Breakthroughs in Cancer and AIDS Research

Posted by Zonk on from the good-things-come-in-sets dept.

FortKnox writes "Two possible medical breakthroughs have come to light in recent days. In Australia, it was discovered that pineapple extract can stimulate the body to attack cancer cells. And in Japan, Kumamoto University researchers have developed a drug that will block cells from the AIDS virus, thus making something akin to an AIDS vaccine." From the Australian news: "One of the molecules, CCZ, stimulates the body's immune system to target and kill cancer cells, the other, CCS, blocks a protein called Ras, which is defective in 30 percent of all cancers. QIMR researcher Tracey Mynott said her team had set out to find why the enzyme-rich bromelaine crush had such strong effects on biological material."

42 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. Still no cure for cancer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Still no cure for can...er, never mind. Well, the people over at FARK must be really disappointed. They'll have to come up with a new tagline!

    1. Re:Still no cure for cancer... by Aqua+OS+X · · Score: 3, Funny

      Dude, what are you talking about. According to Slashdot, cancer and AIDs are cured every other month.

      --
      "Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
  2. Vindicated! by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 3, Funny

    From TFA:
    Australian scientists have discovered pineapple molecules can act as powerful anti-cancer agents and said the research could lead to a new class of cancer-fighting drugs.
    Scientists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) said their work centred on two molecules from bromelaine, an extract derived from crushed pineapple stems that is used to tenderise meat, clarify beers and tan hides.
    HA! I told my guidance counselor that all that beer drinkin' would pay off eventually... ^_^
    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    1. Re:Vindicated! by RapmasterT · · Score: 5, Funny
      dammit! I only drink cloudy beers.

      I guess it's going to be a long weekend of explaing WTF is up with the pinapples slices in my hefeweizen.

    2. Re:Vindicated! by RapmasterT · · Score: 5, Funny
      Actually pinapple has another effect, that of making your bodily secretions smell/taste better. That is an old date trick....
      Considering at what point of the evening this "date trick" would become relevant, I've never understood why I should give a rat.

      My reaction to the statement "eewweee it tasts yucky" is usually "why are you still here"?

  3. Enzyme-rich bromelaine crush? by Ossifer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Never tried it, but I do like Orange Crush...

  4. Pineapple! by Evil+W1zard · · Score: 5, Funny

    Time to go buy some stock in Dole!

    Oh I can see it now... Healthy, Tasty Pineapple Flavored Cigarettes that have no Surgeon General's Warning.

    --
    News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
  5. Cures and money. by HillBilly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Cures for a lot of diseases probably already exist but there is no money in curering people, just treating their symptoms. You really think drug companies care about your health?

    --
    "Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
    1. Re:Cures and money. by team99parody · · Score: 5, Funny
      "You really think drug companies care about your health?"

      Would it even be legal for them to do so if they wanted to?

      Wouldn't that violate their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders? It'd be like microsoft killing off their upgrade revenue by releasing a secure OS.

    2. Re:Cures and money. by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you survive longer, you rack up more medical bills. Curing HIV might not be a big money-maker, but do you know how many drugs senior citizens take? Keeping them alive to continue their medications would be a gold mine.

      --
      "It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
    3. Re:Cures and money. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Right. Because none of the researchers for those drug companies have family members, friends or acquiantances that might be ill -- they're all in it for the money, even if it kills their parents.

    4. Re:Cures and money. by DownTownMT · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Cures for a lot of diseases probably already exist but there is no money in curering people, just treating their symptoms.

      As much as I wish that wasn't true I'm afraid it is. I'm dating an immunologist right now, and even she has told me that the pharmaceutical companies aren't interested in cures, only lifestyle drugs such as giving an 80 year old a woody, or helping people loose weight. Basically there's no profit in cures, only the drugs you have to keep taking.

      I just find it sickening that thousands die each year from HIV, cancer, and the sorts, but hey, old people are having sex!

      --
      "Insert Sig Here"
    5. Re:Cures and money. by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 4, Funny


      I was wondering when someone would work in the obligatory Slashdot M$ slam...well done!

      --
      ____

      ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    6. Re:Cures and money. by Ingolfke · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you survive longer, you rack up more medical bills. Curing HIV might not be a big money-maker, but do you know how many drugs senior citizens take? Keeping them alive to continue their medications would be a gold mine.

      Exactly... here's you cure for AIDS and your free trial sample of Viagra... go get em champ.

    7. Re:Cures and money. by OrionoirO · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Cures for a lot of diseases probably already exist but there is no money in curering people, just treating their symptoms. You really think drug companies care about your health?

      While drug companies are probably most concerned with profit, there is quite a bit of money to be made in curing people. Imagine company A has a treatment, and company B has a cure. People will buy company B's cure.

      Also, the HIV drug described in TFA, even if it worked perfectly, would probably require someone who was infected to use it for the rest of their lives to prevent cells that were already infected with the virus from becoming active and spreading it. This would make anyone who produced the drug quite a bit of money.
    8. Re:Cures and money. by Necromancyr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, you'd better tell your immunologist friend to go work at a few of the companies, talk to some of the project managers, or hell - attend the BIO http://www.bio.com/ conference.

      It's disconcerting to me that an immunologist doesn't realize that treating symptoms are easy, and a HELL of a lot easier to get past the FDA, then something that causes issues in a persons system but cures them.

      Seriously, it's the biggest problem right now that has companies redefining what to make. People can't deal with a 1 in 20,000 chance they may have a higher chance of a heart attack if they take drug X, even though without drug X they are in constant pain every day all day.

      The american public refuses to accept any danger/risk at all from there medications - and because of this it takes a HELL of a lot longer to develop anything then it did before.

      The first vaccines available got people sick left and right - but people took them anyway, even with the 1 in 10000 or 1 in 1000 risk because once you actually got the disease, you had a MUCH lower chance of surviving.

      Moral of the story? Get educated before you make comments - even if someone who's an 'expert' tells you something.

    9. Re:Cures and money. by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah. Because shareholders in drug companies vote their shares in a manner designed to help the employees families, as opposed to in a manner designed to maximize their profits. And because shareholders hand onto shares of stock of drug companies that aren't profitable because they're working for common benefit as opposed to profit (instead of dumping those shares and buying up shares of a profitable drug company).

      Sometimes, the interests of "profit" and "common good" overlap. But when they don't, in a market economy, who do you think wins?

      --
      "It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
    10. Re:Cures and money. by LurkerXXX · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Another tinfoil hat conspiracy guy eh? Here's some news for you. Much/most of the biology research done in the U.S. is paid for by the National Institutes of Health. That's the government, not drug companies. To the tune of $28 billion or so last year alone. That's your tax dollars at work.

      Most done by labs at Universities like mine. If I find a cure for a disease, I'd get famous in my field. Not only that, but it would pretty much ensure that I will have all the future funding for my research that I could want.

      Even besides all that, there are plenty of folks in my lab, in my department, and collegues at other Universities I collaborate with who know what I'm working on and how things are going. Hiding something major like a cure for a major disease just isn't going to happen. There is zero in it for me to hide my research, even if it were possible.

      Now the drug companies would be the ones to actually produce the drug for sale. They might charge you an arm and a leg for the pill, but it wouldn't be hidden from you.

      That is all. We now return you to your regular worries about the aliens reading your brainwaves. And look out for the black helicoptors!

  6. Great, one more thing for Spam to pimp. by doublem · · Score: 5, Funny

    Herbal Pineapple extract Spam in 5... 4... 3...

    --
    "Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
  7. old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    old news

    1: Planta Med. 1985 Dec;(6):538-9. Related Articles, Links Inhibition of tumour growth in vitro by bromelain, an extract of the pineapple plant (Ananas comosus). Taussig SJ, Szekerczes J, Batkin S. PMID: 4095199 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
    1985.
    At least it's not a dupe.

    1. Re:old news by The_Mystic_For_Real · · Score: 4, Funny

      The news isn't the breakthrough, the news is that science is being done in Australia. No more 'Gator Studies' majors there anymore I guess.

      --

      _____

      Thank you.

    2. Re:old news by carlcub · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sure, in 1985, they knew that bromelaine would suppress tumor growth. I don't think they had identified the particular molecules that were responsible, though, which is what will lead to future viable treatments. It's not like you can inject pineapple extract into a living patient.

  8. Hopefully... by rwven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I just hope these don't fade into the background as a lot of these types of things do. i think the world is ready for some cures...

  9. I dunno... by vykor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe I'm getting jaded these days, but it seems that every other week we have an announcement about a revolutionary breakthrough that's going to cure all these terminal conditions. And yet, we don't really seem to see masses of cancer patients getting cured outside these laboratory studies, in the way that antibiotics swept away most bacterial illnesses. Survival rates are up, sure, but most people are still dying and these conditions are still considered more or less terminal. Are the Powers That Be simply sitting on a bunch of cures, or do these things never turn out to be as promising as they were in experimental trials?

    1. Re:I dunno... by Otter · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Are the Powers That Be simply sitting on a bunch of cures...

      Yeah, that's it. We're spending billions of dollars on research to find cures and not sell them. Then when patients die, we burglarize their homes during the funeral. Profit!

      Look. Killing certain human cells while not killing all the rest of the cells is hard. It's a lot harder than killing a foreign pathogen without killing the human, which is already a lot harder than, say, rebooting a server or modifying a Perl script.

      ...or do these things never turn out to be as promising as they were in experimental trials?

      Also, please note that the cancer treatment here hasn't been in human trials. (The AIDS treatment has.) It hasn't even been in animals yet. Will it fail to be as promising as the hyperventilating press release makes out? There's a 99.9999% chance that it will.

      --
      What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    2. Re:I dunno... by ebuck · · Score: 5, Informative

      Perhaps it's a fundamental flaw in news reporting and how it rarely interacts well with scientific researchers that explain your jaded state.

      For a number of years, I worked in biological research, and twice I had the (dis)pleasure of interacting with reporters.

      If you tell them there is an observed improvement in 15% of all cases, then it's a cure. If you tell them there is a statistical corelation, then it "causes". If you tell them about the science, they will latch onto the most trivial detail and make it the entire point of your research effort.

      It's because most Science doesn't make good news. Good news (at least as it seems to be presented these days) gives the audience the aura of understanding without any actual understanding. In other words, good news asks the audience to learn almost nothing, but be entertained nonetheless.

      To prove my point, cancer is the misbehavior of the patient's own cells, yet nearly everyone refers to it as an item that is "caught" like a transmittable disease, and "cured" like a bacterial infection. Non-scientists rarely differentiate between the reasons why our cells misbehave, instead they concentrate on where the misbehaving cells are located. Finally, people tend to totally ignore the effects of known carcinogens because they have been bombared with so much bad news that started off as:

      When rats eat a diet of 80% fat, they have a 12% higher risk of contracting a cancer over a 3 year lifespan, 40% of those cases are self-arresting producing only benign tumors.

      becomes:

      Scientists find that diets high in fat significantly increase the risk of cancer. People who eat pizza, french-fries, and mayonnaise are at risk, and are 60% more likely to die. So it's time to stock up on those veggies.

      No mention that it's rats, not people. No mention that it's a lifetime diet of 80% fat. No mention that it only affects 12% of the rat population studied. No mention that 60% of the affected die, leading to an increase of mortailty of only 8% or so.

      Sometimes (just like in my example) they do it so badly that they have internal logical errors in their own reporting. 60% more likely to die (as opposed to 100% certainty that we will eventually die).

      So be skeptical, but please don't be skeptical of the science, unless you are one of the few people who actually bother to read the publications without the mind-numbing news filter placed on top of it.

  10. I love "almost no side effects"... by JargonScott · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's such a great cover. I wonder what the "almost no" side effects are, like "all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light".

    --
    Nuke Gay Whales for Jesus.
  11. Pineapple molecules by crimoid · · Score: 3, Funny

    "pineapple molecules"

    Pineapples have molecules of their own?

  12. Re:The Difference by Reverend528 · · Score: 3, Informative
    My guess is the virus can still enter the bloodstream...

    Yes, but as a virus, it's unable to reproduce if it cannot enter the cells.

    --
    Badass Resumes
  13. Re:Breakthrough?*Yawn* by secondsun · · Score: 3, Informative

    How everything will work in the actual patient...

    This HIV study was a 40 patient clinical trial. Pretty damn close to actual patients if you ask me.

    --
    There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
  14. Aids Vaccination? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Bad news for Trojan good news for Hasboro.

  15. Double Benefit by Foolomon · · Score: 3, Funny
    Not only does it attack cancer, but by drinking pineapple juice I can taste better too!

    I wonder how my imaginary girlfriend will feel about this...

  16. Re:Skepticism is in order by cbnewman · · Score: 5, Informative

    yikes. having personally seen the effects of HIV infection and AIDS in people who subscribe to the AIDS Denialist school of thought, i felt compelled to reply to this posting.

    bottom line:

    1. CD4+ T-lymhocyte counts and HIV viral loads have been negatively and positively (respectively) correlated with survival in virtually every patient population ever studied.

    2.highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) has been shown to significantly reduce mortality in HIV-infected individuals.

    we practice evidence-based medicine in the united states. you can try to poke holes in the virology if you want to (i'm not a virologist) but you can't argue with epidemiology.

    the theory that HIV is the causative pathogen in AIDS has not been disproven in any peer-reviewed publication that i have ever seen.

    we know how to treat these patients and turn AIDS into a chronic rather than a fatal illness.

    here is a more complete resource on the debate.

  17. In the Petri dish, it's very simple by paiute · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Back in the day, when one wrote a NSF grant proposal to fund the isolation, identification and synthesis of natural product, one always included prominently the fact that in vitro - in a Petri dish, the desired compound killed cancer cells. Hey presto - now it's an NIH grant proposal as well. The keywords antitumor, anticancer, etc. in the title were magic.

    Of course, these never became actual medicines. One realized over time that a sledgehammer will kill cancer cells in a Petri dish. As will a stick of dynamite or a teaspoonful of sodium cyanide or just driving over it with a Buick.

    Once you take into account that human biological system is slightly more complex than the Petri dish system, you will be less excited by the breathless prose of headline writers.

    --
    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  18. Re:AIDS is not a virus by geon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, I guess the flu virus ain't a virus either, under the reasoning you exhibit above?

    AIDS is not a virus, but "AIDS virus" simply means "the virus that causes AIDS", just as "flu virus" means "the virus that causes the flu". Of course, the actual _name_ of the "AIDS virus" is HIV.

    The person writing the phrase "AIDS virus" knows what he means, as does everyone reading the phrase. There's not even anything misleading about it: AIDS referes to a syndrome which is caused by infection by HIV, and the phrase AIDS virus is just a reference to human immunodeficiency virus - nothing misleading about it. While I would prefer that someone refer to HIV as simply HIV, calling it the AIDS virus is not wrong.

    "AIDS vaccine" is slightly misleading, for the reason you give, but it is also a case of everyone involved knowing precisely what is meant, and no actual confusion is likely to result.

    +5 informative my arse. The above is not unlike complaining about the usage of who versus whom in some random sentence.

    (This post brought to you by a lack of coffee and a distaste for grammar fascism and related disorders.)

  19. C'mon folks, get real by yeastbeast · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a biomedical researcher who has worked on cancer mechanisms in the past, I speak with some authority: these "breakthroughs" are a load of hooey. The popular press really loves it when some dinky little research group at Bumblefuck U. discovers a modest effect on cancer cells, HIV, etc. by some commonplace natural molecule. We've heard it about pineapples, green tea, broccoli, red wine, you name it. Usually these studies are conducted under extremely artificial conditions using tiny sample sizes and ambiguous assays. To be cynical, if researchers want to get a positive result, they can usually contrive some experimental condition where they'll observe said result. I read Slashdot for interesting technology items but I have been very disappointed with the caliber of the biomedical coverage. There have been a number of stunning discoveries over the last few years (two that leap to mind are microRNA-mediated viral immunity and gene regulation or epigenetic memory in plants) that never made it to Slashdot because they require more than a high school level education in biology to appreciate. Evidently, mod points don't go to people with an advanced knowledge of biology. How would you feel if all of tech stories were press releases from Microsoft?

  20. Oh sure by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And there's a cure for ebola, measles, smallpox ... abstinence from society. Total abstinence. That'll knock 'em dead.

    There's a cure for auto accidents, too, called the M1 Abrams tank. Mileage sucks, maintenance sucks, cost sucks, but by god, if we only let those people drive who could afford Abrams, why, we'd cut deaths from auto accidents down to almost zero.

    Or maybe you'd prefer banning automobiles altogether. Yeh, that'd stop auto accidents. Yeh.

    Get real. Expecting humans to abstain from sex except with their spouse is about as real as expecting people to stop speeding on the honor system. Especially when the number of people with AIDS in the US is around one million; one in 300. And with the incubation period being on the order of ten years, it sure isn't on people's minds all the time, especially when they get drunk or just plain feel good. Are you going to ban alcohol and feeling good too?

    It's real nice to spout platitudes about morality and abstinence being the only known cure, but it isn't a known cure because it doesn't stop transfusions or needle sharing spreading AIDs, and there are far more practical methods like using condoms. Are you part of the crowd that turns your nose up at recommending condoms to stop AIDs because it encourages amoral sex outside marriage? Must be nice to not have shit that stinks.

    Better to have a solution, condoms, which is widely used, even if it is only 95% effective, than some psuedo cure, alleged to be 100% effective, which is unusable in practice.

    Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Moral twerps have their heads up their asses.

    --
    Infuriate left and right
    1. Re:Oh sure by Ced_Ex · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just an FYI, there are cases being reported that the incubation period has dropped to just several months.

      Yikes!

      http://www.planetout.com/news/article.html?date=20 05/02/11/2

      --
      Live forever, or die trying.
    2. Re:Oh sure by Lifewish · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That sucks for those who contract it, but it's a good thing for the human race as a whole as these varieties are unlikely to survive very well - they'll kill all their hosts too quickly.

      Gotta love mathematics :(

      --
      For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
  21. Supplements by OverCode@work · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm going to go buy some of the pineapple extract (bromelain) tonight and start taking it daily.

    I have a bad case of melanoma (stage 4), and while there's still some hope in traditional treatments and clinical trials, I need every advantage I can get. If bromelain slows the growth of the tumors even a little, it's a huge help in combination with the other things I'm taking. And if it doesn't help, it probably won't do any harm. It's just natural pineapple extract, and it's been consumed for years.

    I'm taking artemisinin (sweet wormwood extract) for similar reasons, though I do have to be careful with my dose of that because it's somewhat hard on the liver. I'm also waiting for an order of Vitamin B17 (amygdalin/laetrile) to arrive. The latter was somewhat hard to track down because of a stink the FDA raised about it a few years ago.

    Dietary supplements alone won't cure me, but they just might help, and as such it would be ridiculous for me not to try them.

    -John

  22. Re:Hello ... McFly ... Hello! by Ravatar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The quickest route to divorce is a bad sex life. The quickest route to divorce is money-related issues.

  23. Re:Two women in China IMMUNE TO AIDS! by SubconsciousSeraphim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know this may be sort of thick of me, but does immunity also imply that you won't carry it?